There are many ways you can practice Spanish, the language you want to learn; but sometimes we get trapped thinking that the only way to practice Spanish is talking to a native speaker or a teacher.Well, keep reading and you will see how to practice and then improve your Spanish on a daily basis with these simple things we do.
- Music will help you improve your Spanish
Music is one of the things that we enjoy the most. It is difficult to find someone who doesn’t like music. We listen to music in the morning, when we are taking a shower, when we are running, when we are cooking, when we are in a car or in a bus, etc. Listening to music is a regular activity for the majority of humans.
The question is… how can you use music to learn Spanish?
First, to be clear, I have to let you know that music by itself would not teach you Spanish. Here’s an example, there are a lot of people who listen to music in other languages and know nothing else but some songs in these languages.
Yes, you need more than just listening to music. Don’t worry, is not something tedious, actually it will help you enjoy the songs you like in that language.
Basically, one of the things that we do with the songs we listened to, is to look for the lyrics and read them. However, don’t stop here, you need to look for the meaning of the words you don’t understand; this will help you in a great manner to improve your vocabulary.
When you know the lyrics and its meaning, the second step comes. You need to keep listening to the song until you learn the lyrics. This will help your brain get used to the Spanish language and also, it will help you improve your listening.
You may have noticed this in your native language: When singers sing, they adapt the majority of the words to match the rhythm they have created. Don’t worry about that, your brain will appreciate the little words you force it to remember.
After learning the song and the lyrics, the fun part comes: you just sing the song. This is important because this will help you in the same way the other steps helped you, but this will also improve your pronunciation and will help you remember a lot of words and phrases; Apart from that, it gives you the confidence to say each word of the lyrics in the right way. Isn’t that cool?
Read the lyrics, learn the songs and sing!
We encourage you to practice listening to music, but if you do it, do it properly and you’ll see good results.
- TV Programs or videos
We all watch TV, according to the Bureau of Labour Statistics, in the United States, the average American spent 2.8 hours a day watching TV in 2014. So if people spend that much time watching TV every day, why not use that time to improve your Spanish?
I’ll tell you what I did to learn English. There was a TV show that I really loved. The TV show had a lot of seasons. So this is what I did: because I didn’t know a lot of English, I kept watching the show in my own language, but I turned on the English subtitles to the program. It may sound silly, but your eyes will move along with the letters and that would go directly to your brain, and it will train your brain impressively, this step would help your brain to learn vocabulary and the meaning of certain words and phrases. And you will be just guessing the words at the beginning, but it will help you a lot.
I kept watching the TV show and after a few shows I felt confident enough to jump in to the next step of the ladder. I completely switched the language of the TV to English. It was crazy, I felt like I was watching the same show, but with different people. This step really helped my listening skills. I was improving at a really fast pace by doing this. Although I kept the Spanish subtitles to understand what they were saying, my brain started to relate what the words meant and I learned a lot of new phrases in English that we don’t use in Spanish.
When you do this with Spanish TV you will be improving your listening greatly and also your brain automatically will be getting phrases and sayings that you didn’t know; The funny thing is that you will mention those things in the right manner, not even remembering where you heard them.
Then after a couple of months of listening to my TV shows with subtitles on, I saw that it was time to change, time to continue going forward so I started watching the TV programs without subtitles. I did this, and since that moment on, my listening skills improved impressively.
When you stop the subtitles, you will catch just a couple of words at the beginning. Don’t worry that’s totally normal, butI promise you, if you keep doing this, you will be doing great in just a couple of weeks.
Do your best to remember these steps, they are all beneficial and you will have fun in each one of them.
I hope it can help you as much as it helped me.
- Your phone can help you improve your memory in Spanish
Have you seen anyone without a phone lately? If you have, that’s weird nowadays.
In today’s world we are forced to have smart-phones. You can do almost everything with your phone. They can help you communicate in many ways. From calling Mom to save you from the cashier at the grocery store to even see what time your meal is going to be ready.
Well I have great news for you. You can use you mobile phone to learn English. How can you do that? Set it in Spanish so you can Improve your memory and remember words. When you do this, you are training your brain to differentiate the different sections that your phone has. Thus, remembering them by their name in Spanish not in your mother tongue. This will help your brain to stop being lazy and start thinking in Spanish not in your mother tongue. As I said, your brain will start to feel more comfortable with Spanish and it will be easier to think in this language.
These steps are super easy to practice on a daily basis. If you practice this, I can completely assure you that you will see improvement in just a couple of weeks after you start putting them in practice. So, why do you keep waiting?
Start now and see for yourself how these simple things can help you in the process of learning.I recommend you track your progress every week to see the amazing results you can have doing these daily activities.
